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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Joan Collins |Lionel Shriver |Rod Liddle |James Kanagasooriam
“Traitor!” the woman yelled at me the instant I entered the beautifully decorated living room of a famous actress. It was a Twelfth Night celebration, and the room was full of glamorous friends and acquaintances. “What?” I replied, bemused. “That photo!” she screamed, “How could you take that picture with all those Republicans?”Over Christmas I had been to a dinner hosted by some good friends who happen to be Republicans. This, it turned out, was a great crime.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Lionel Shriver |Rod Liddle |James Kanagasooriam
On the cusp of an almighty row over President Donald Trump’s planned mass deportations, let’s look to Europe for light relief.
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2 months ago | 
thespectator.com | Katy Balls |Ben Domenech |James Kanagasooriam
“We’ve had enough of living in two-tier Britain,” bellows Nigel Farage to cheers from an 800-strong crowd at Chester’s Crowne Plaza Hotel, where he is holding court. “There is not a single person on that Labour frontbench who’s ever worked in private business,” the Reform leader declares. “So, is it any wonder they’re making such a Horlicks of it?”Chester is the sixth stop on Farage’s new year tour, which was initially intended to sound a steady drumbeat in the lead-up to May’s local elections.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Becket Adams |James Kanagasooriam |Jacob Heilbrunn
We’re in the throes of a full-blown moral panic, but this time it’s Nazis instead of Dungeons & Dragons. Nazis are everywhere in the United States. There are signs of them everywhere. Their influence is unmistakable, from beverages to hobbies to views on the nuclear family. It’s eleven o’clock. Do you know where your Nazis are?
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Kate Andrews |Ben Domenech |Amber Duke |James Kanagasooriam
We’ve heard more from the forty-seventh president this week than we heard from his predecessor over many months. But Donald Trump has always loved the spotlight: especially when he gets to rile up all his favorite people. This was on full display this week when, rather than winding down from his inauguration speech, the president ramped up his message in a video call to Davos.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | Rod Liddle |Cressida Bonas |James Kanagasooriam
I can see one possible benefit of having a full inquiry into the almost exclusively Muslim grooming gangs who raped and assaulted and in some cases murdered young white girls and are perhaps still doing so in a selection of Britain’s ghastliest towns. The number of lawyers it would employ and the enormous salaries they receive might just about tilt the country out of a recession next quarter. I can’t see much other benefit.
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Jan 24, 2025 | 
thespectator.com | James Kanagasooriam |Cressida Bonas |Ben Domenech
The world appears to be turning on its axis — and moving hard to the right. The New World is tilting hardest. In Argentina, Javier Milei is taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy. In the US, Donald Trump is poised to deport migrants, deregulate the economy and drill, baby, drill. Canada’s tendresse for the maple-syrupy liberal Justin Trudeau chilled into a bitter determination to oust him in favor of the anti-“woke, “pro-growth “true conservative” Pierre Poilievre.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
politicalwhiteboard.substack.com | James Kanagasooriam
Bit on me & why am I starting a substack? I’m a pollster and analyst - and love identifying and explaining the non-obvious slower trends/patterns that shape societies. I’m the Chief Research Officer of Focaldata - a 60 person AI-research company. Thanks for reading The Political Whiteboard! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. I’ve called this substack The Political Whiteboard because at work that’s basically what I enjoy most.
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Sep 28, 2024 | 
ukonward.com | Sebastian Payne |James Kanagasooriam |Shivani Menon |Gavin Rice
In July 2024 the Conservative Party suffered its worst ever electoral defeat. It now faces an existential “sink or swim” moment. How did this happen? Breaking Blue, the largest UK post-election study of its kind, reveals the short, medium, and longer-term causes of the historic outcome and the route back to power for the centre-right. In a major collaboration with Focaldata and JL Partners, Onward has conducted comprehensive quantitative and qualitative research with over 24,000 participants.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | James Kanagasooriam
Donald Trump was reduced to talking about immigrants eating pet cats and dogs during Tuesday night’s presidential debate. His own supporters would admit it didn’t go well. Lacking message discipline and straying too far into the bizarre, a CNN poll found that 63 per cent of viewers judged the debate a win for Kamala Harris. Winning debates and elections aren’t the same thing, though. The polls — and votes — that really matter in the race for the White House lie in the swing states.
